The Peel Commission
DOCUMENT IN CONTEXT
Great Britain administered Palestine for more than thirty years, between its capture of
Jerusalem from the Ottoman Empire in December 1917 and the establishment of the
State of Israel in May 1948. Throughout this period, the British government strug-
gled to reconcile the seemingly incompatible elements of policies that it had articu-
lated during World War I and that the League of Nations had officially adopted in
the mandate for Palestine. The central policies involved promoting the establishment
of a Jewish “national home” in Palestine while protecting the rights of the Arabs who
had lived there for centuries. In 1920 waves of violence, much of it generated by Arabs
increasingly frustrated by what they viewed as British favoritism toward the Jews, began
to plague Palestine. In response to the violence and other events, the British govern-
ment repeatedly tinkered with its policies for Palestine. Britain often enraged the Arabs
as well as the Jews, but it remained officially committed to a Jewish national home.
Immigration and land quickly became the core issues of dispute among the British,
the Arabs, and the Jews. Britain was officially committed to supporting the emigration
of Jews (predominantly from Eastern Europe) to Palestine. During the first decade of
the mandate, the Jewish population in Palestine more than doubled, to about 175,000,
while the Arab population grew steadily but more slowly to slightly less than 900,000.
Zionist leaders made no secret of their plans to push for even more immigration so that
Jews eventually would become a majority in Palestine, thus justifying the creation of a
Jewish state. To provide homes and livelihoods for these immigrants, the Jewish
National Fund purchased (mostly from wealthy Arab landowners) thousands of acres
of land, much of which in turn was given or sold at a discount to newly arrived Jews.
In many cases, Arab tenants were evicted after the land was sold from under them.
The first wave of Arab violence against Jews erupted in 1920–1921, just as Lon-
don began finalizing its plans to administer Palestine under the League of Nations
mandate. Another round of violence occurred in 1929, sparked by a dispute over reli-
gious observances at the Western, or “Wailing,” Wall of the ancient Temple of Herod
in Jerusalem. The violence stemmed from growing Arab fears that the Zionists were
succeeding in their plans to turn Palestine into a Jewish homeland. Nearly 250 peo-
ple were killed in 1929, slightly more than half of them Jews.
In response to the violence, the British government sent two investigating com-
missions to Palestine. The first, headed by Sir Walter Shaw, recommended in March
1930 that the government exercise more control over Jewish immigration and that it
protect Arab tenants against automatic eviction when the land they occupied was sold
to Jewish interests. A second investigation, led by Sir John Hope Simpson in Octo-
ber 1930, also proposed an even-handed policy toward the Arabs and Jews and that
immigration of Jews be limited to the ability of Palestine’s economy to absorb them.
The government incorporated the recommendations of this second commission into a
policy statement known as the Passfield White Paper (after Lord Passfield, the colo-
nial secretary at the time).
42 ARABS AND ISRAELIS